


The Dragon Prince Shipping Poll

by avtoservis



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Fandom Poll, Meta, Multi, Nonfiction, WARNING: Chapter 5 will contain mentions of incest and adult/minor relatioships, as well as relationships between humans and dragons
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-08
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:07:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23068216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avtoservis/pseuds/avtoservis
Summary: [UPDATE] Favorite Ships (Part 1) is upPlease be aware that Chapter 5 contains mentions of sensitive topics: big age gaps between adults, adult/minor relationships, human/dragon relationships, and incest.--------------Hello fellow Dragon Prince ships! I decided to create a shipping poll to see which ships are the most popular, find out what rare ships we have and have fun as a whole fandom.
Relationships: Aanya/Ellis (The Dragon Prince), Aanya/Ezran (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos/Aditi (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos/Elarion (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos/Gren (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos/Harrow/Viren (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos/Ibis (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos/Ibis/Viren (The Dragon Prince)/Original Female Character(s), Aaravos/Lujanne (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos/Runaan (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos/Runaan/Viren (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos/Viren (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos/Viren/Ziard (The Dragon Prince), Aaravos/Ziard (The Dragon Prince), Amaya/Corvus/Gren (The Dragon Prince), Amaya/Gren (The Dragon Prince), Amaya/Janai (The Dragon Prince), Annika/Neha (The Dragon Prince), Callum/Claudia (The Dragon Prince), Callum/Claudia/Rayla (The Dragon Prince), Callum/Nyx/Rayla (The Dragon Prince), Callum/Rayla (The Dragon Prince), Callum/Soren (The Dragon Prince), Claudia/Rayla (The Dragon Prince), Claudia/Soren (The Dragon Prince), Corvus/Crow Master (The Dragon Prince), Corvus/Gren (The Dragon Prince), Corvus/Opeli (The Dragon Prince), Corvus/Soren (The Dragon Prince), Crow Master/Viren (The Dragon Prince), Ellis/Ezran (The Dragon Prince), Ethari/Gren/Runaan (The Dragon Prince), Ethari/Runaan (The Dragon Prince), Gren/Kazi (The Dragon Prince), Gren/Soren (The Dragon Prince), Harrow/Sarai (The Dragon Prince), Harrow/Sarai/Viren (The Dragon Prince), Harrow/Sarai/Viren/Viren's Ex-Wife (The Dragon Prince), Harrow/Viren (The Dragon Prince), Ibis/Nyx (The Dragon Prince), Ibis/Viren (The Dragon Prince), Kazi/Soren (The Dragon Prince), Marcos/Sabah (The Dragon Prince), Marcos/Soren (The Dragon Prince), Nyx/Soren (The Dragon Prince), Rayla/Soren (The Dragon Prince), Runaan/Soren (The Dragon Prince), Sarai/Viren (The Dragon Prince), Viren/Viren's Ex-Wife (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 47
Kudos: 44





	1. Chapter 1

The poll consists of three questions: what ships you ship, what your favorite ship is, and how old you are. You may choose to ignore the last question - I’m just curious if there’s a correlation between the age of the characters shipped and that of the people who ship them.

I spent the last couple of days going through tumblr and ao3 to find any ships I didn’t know about and these make up the list you see in the poll. I don’t know if I got all the ship names correctly - some ships had more than one and I just chose what sounded best. I’m sure there are some ships I missed. If that happens to be a ship that you like - I would be happy if you added it as one of your ships under the option “Other”. If you ship characters with yourself or your OC’s, add the entry as “[character’s name] x me” and “[character name x OC]. Cross-fandom ships are also acceptable.


	2. 5 days left!

First of all, I'd like to thank those who have already cast their vote! I'm really excited about this poll and I'm happy that I got so many responses!

How many, you say? A whooping 637! 

Why do I want to get as many responses as I can? Because I want this poll to be as representative of the whole fandom as it can be. There are probably tens of thousands of people who watch The Dragon Prince, a lot of whom are shippers. There's no way I can get everyone to vote, so I need to make sure my poll has at least enough to represent them.

Let's assume 1million people in the world watch The Dragon Prince and half of the (500,000) are shippers. So what do I want? I want to get results that predict the opinion of all 500,000 with a 95% probability of accuracy AND I want my error to be as small as possible (let's say - 2%), then I'd need to ask 2,390 people. 

That's a lot of people (and a lot of data to process!), but a smaller number is not necessarily that much worse. If I get 700 responses, my margin of error is only gonna increase to 3.7% (it is currently roughly 3.9%).

Ok, but what does a 3.9% error mean for the result? 

Let's imagine we have this distribution of fan votes for their favorite TDP ship:

45% Jelly Tarts x Weapon Grade Bread  
31% Big Sword Guy x Sunforge Dagger Guy  
13% Avizandum x Zubeya  
8% Bait x Pip  
3% Berto x Pip

Ok, seems pretty straightforward. 

But what if I asked you to tell me what is the top five favorite TDP ships in all of fandom, going from the most popular to the least? And now we have a problem. With a 3.9% margin of error, the percentage for each ship can range like so:

41.1%-48.9% Jelly Tarts x Weapon Grade Bread  
27.1%-34.9% Big Sword Guy x Sunforge Dagger Guy  
9.1%-16.9% Avizandum x Zubeya  
4.1%-11.9% Bait x Pip  
0%-6.9% Berto x Pip

While number 1 and 2 are clear, how do we decide numbers 3, 4, and 5?

It could be: (a) Avibeya, Bip, Pipto; (b) Avibeya, Pipto, Bip; (c) Bip, Avibeya, Pipto. If we want to make predictions for the whole fandom - that's the best we can do. 

And Pipto shippers have another reason to be upset - their ship becomes statistically insignificant!

This isn't the end of the world, though - I will still get accurate data for the participants of the poll, which is also useful. Plus, sample size is not the only determinant of accuracy - my poll limits my audience to English speakers, which excludes Russian, German, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Arabic, Polish, Japanese (and other) language speaking fans. Cultural differences can play a large role in favorite ships, I think.

To conclude: if you made it this far - thank you. I'd love to get 1000 responses, but that's not necessary to have some fun fandom statistics.

Happy shipping!


	3. General Information on the Results

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things you should know before we discuss the results

**The Data I Gathered**

The data for the results come from two sources: the poll (698 responses) and 3 comments on AO3 from people who didn’t vote on the poll, but added their comments before the voting deadline. This makes the total sample of 701. I have also participated in the poll.

Some responses might have been submitted twice (at least I noticed some of them doubled), but I included everything as it was, because fishing out for duplicates would’ve been extra work. I don’t think it skews the results that much, anyway, since I have a 3.7% margin of error.

**Error**

There are two ways of looking at error of the data:

  * the human error;
  * the representativity error.



The former is just any mistakes I might’ve made while processing the data (since I’m not familiar with statistical software, I did most of the work manually), while the latter deals with how accurately my results represent the whole TDP fandom.

See Chapter 2 for a more detailed discussion on the latter.

**Ship Inclusion**

I understand that some of the ships included in the poll are largely considered problematic and I apologize if that makes you uncomfortable. However, I want the results to reflect the fandom as accurately as possible and excluding certain ships would impede that goal.

I thank you for your understanding and civility.

**Ship names**

I didn’t know the ship names for many of the ships I received from people, but I prefer to display certain results using them for convenience, therefore I took the liberty to make up my own ship names. 

Some ships consist of three or even four people, so those ship names are naturally going to be harder to decipher. Please refer to my [master ship list](https://tdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com/ships) for reference.

There are two ships that might look extra weird - Virex (Viren x Viren’s Ex-wife) and Sarex (Sarai x Callum’s dad). I used them for simplicity, but I’ll be happy to use better ship names once these characters are named.


	4. Total Ships by Popularity (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here are all 89 ships listed by number of votes

Finally, here are the first results of the Shipping Poll! I’ll start off by posting the general findings. The table below is the list of all ships by popularity, i.e. 89 ships listed according to how many people voted for them. Here’s a [pdf version](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fdrive.google.com%2Ffile%2Fd%2F1d8nUmQ0uvL1RN3nmeHV1Yp7pkrnvmUwb%2Fview%3Fusp%3Dsharing&t=NmRkMGMxYzExYzc5ODUwMGZmNTIzNjJiMTY0Yzk0ZjRmNTlmMDJjYyxQSUF4a245Sw%3D%3D&b=t%3AQB80El3dlvufJXaBWVcG3w&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F615953688185520128%2Fships-by-popularity&m=1) so you can see the whole table.

[character] x me and [character] x OC ships are going to be discussed in a separate post.

Please read the General Information in Chapter 3 first and the section on Error in Chapter 2. The red line in the table denotes the margin of error threshold.

**DISCUSSION**

**A note on terminology:**

> I will be using terms “ **sister ship** ” and “ **related ship** ” instead of “rival ship”, because I don’t like to see ships from the perspective of rivalry. Many people are perfectly capable of multi-shipping the same character in multiple ships.
> 
> I will often refer to Rayllum, Janay and Ruthari and “ **the trio** ” or “ **the top trio** ”.
> 
> I will often refer to Rayllum, Janay, Ruthari, Harrai, Laidrin and Anneha as “ **the canon six** ”.
> 
> I will refer to Viren, Soren and Claudia as **Mage Family** or **magefam**.
> 
> If you aren’t familiar with any of the ship names, please refer to the [ship list](https://tdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com/ships).

I have to say, I was very surprised by the results. I knew Rayllum, Janaya and Ruthari are the top three most popular ships, but I didn’t know there was such a huge difference between. If the difference doesn’t seem big looking at the table, check out this graph instead:

(click[ here](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fspreadsheets%2Fd%2Fe%2F2PACX-1vR3s7cm071o6GFC9QwC1_QFt6mG9QwPORdERYCb8NcDvAp5mAiRDEevTVxb6OqggrtOlom_WREGv0Y2%2Fpubhtml%3Fgid%3D1564845793%26single%3Dtrue&t=OTNmNmZiNWQ1N2IwMDllYWNkZDg3ZjRmMTcyODExM2Q1YmY2ZjYxZCxiU2lNTUcwaQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AQB80El3dlvufJXaBWVcG3w&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F615954138378993664%2Fresult-discussion-total-ships-part-1&m=1) for the enlarged version)

Rayllum is the absolute biggest ship, followed by Janaya, Ruthari and Harrai, all of which tower over the rest of the ships. Not only that, but Harrai being so high up on the list is also surprising.

The fans of Rayllum, Janaya or Ruthari are also very likely to like all three. The big trio is part of what many fans refer to as the “Canon Six” (Rayllum, Janaya, Ruthari, Harrai, Laidrin and Anneha) and I noticed that fans of any of those ships generally like the other five as well. I will discuss this further in a future post.

**I would like to focus on the Top 11 ships first**

****

At first, I found the ones colored yellow surprising because of how little content fans produce of them compare to some ships that scored lower on popularity, with an exception of Anneha - being the first canon lesbian couple they got a lot of tribute posts in the beginning of the show. Sabos and Swordjanne are the most surprising of the bunch, I’d say.

The reason these ships score so high is most likely because they involve characters generally liked by the fandom and they don’t “interfere” with the main trio. I also wonder if they’d score this high if I hadn’t included them in my initial list. Would people care enough to include them on their own? None of these ships were particularly popular in the “favorite ship” category. Corpeli was selected by 6 people, Harrai and Laidrin - by 3 people, Sabos - by 1, Anneha and Swordjanne - by none.

Here, the fault is entirely my own, since my question was very general: “Which of these ships do you ship?” That opens a whole new discussion on what it means to ship something:

  * is this a ship that doesn’t bother you?
  * do you like that ship, enjoy seeing content of it?
  * do you actively seek out content of this ship?
  * do you produce your own content for it?
  * is this a ship you love?



All of these are valid reasons to say you “ship” something, I think. Although it does skew my results a bit, it still shows that the show is full of ships that are generally liked by many fans.

**What about Viravos and Gremaya?**

These two happen to be the most popular non-canon ships with active fans. Although Viravos does not clash with any of the ships in the Canon Six, it features characters, which are generally liked more by older fans of the show. Gremaya, on the other hand, is a sister ship to Janaya, which is the only Canon Six related ship to get this high.

Think about other shows you know. Think about the most popular ships. Very often, there is some sort of “love triangle” on top, isn’t there? In Naruto, there was Naruto x Sasuke vs Sasuke x Sakura. In Bleach there was Ichigo x Rukia vs Ichigo x Renji, in Avatar there was the infamous war between Zuko x Katara and Katara x Aang. You know what I mean, right? But here, the top eight ships just run side-by-side and only the ninth ship is related to one of the main ones.

The closest sister ship to Rayllum (rank #1) is at #16.

The closest sister ship to Janaya (rank #2) is at #9.

The closest sister ship to Ruthari (rank #3) is at #25.

The closest sister ship to Harrai (rank #4) is at #12.

Both Viravos and Harrai are sister ships to Virrow.

So what conclusions can we draw here? To be honest - I’m not sure. Here are some questions I’ve been pondering on:

  * What does this result say about Rayllum, Janaya, Ruthari and Harrai? Does it mean these ships are somehow “stronger” or more “developed” than the ships in other shows?
  * What influence does being canon have on the popularity of these ships? For instance, Runaan x Soren was fairly popular before we learned of Ethari’s existence and his his relationship to Runaan.
  * Why is Janaya’s sister ship so much closer in rank than Rayllum or Ruthari’s? Is it because Amaya has a strong bond with more characters her age than Raylla, Callum, Runaan or Ethari?



The last one made me think about the interpersonal relationships of various characters. I will make a post in a future comparing different sister ships and discussing character interactions on-screen.

**Non-canon ships between 11 and 90 shippers**

Here, the ships in light blue are where characters know each other/have interacted.

The ship in dark blue - where they don’t know each other or have not interacted.

Normally, I don’t discriminate ships by such criteria, because there’s a lot more to a ship than on-screen interaction. Fans are capable of creating wonderful stories with characters who had never met each other in the show, fleshing out their personalities beautifully. Sure, some ships are based on the characters’ looks, but my theory is that personalities have a bigger influence.

Often, when I start shipping someone, it’s not a deliberate choice. There’s hardly any “okay, now I’m gonna ship The Big Sword Guy and Sunforge Dagger Guy” moment. When it comes to ships where characters don’t have a lot of (or any) on-screen interaction, their personalities play an important role. If I like some characters, I start putting them into my own stories more. Sometimes, they interact with other characters and as the story progresses, so do relationships between certain characters who wouldn’t necessarily have a relationship in canon.

Usually, such ships are called “crack ships” and are not very popular. But then there’s Soryx.

I have to say, I did not expect Soryx. In fact, I would never have even thought of shipping them together. Then I saw how popular it was (5 people chose it as their favorite ship, which is not bad for a “crack ship”!) I started to think about it more. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense! Their personalities really do go well together!

It’s incredible - Soryx is almost as popular as Virrow, and, given the [3.7% margin of error](https://tdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com/post/615502074537459712/error), either of them could be more popular than the other, given a bigger sample (my sample was only 701 people).

Speaking of Virrow, I was really surprised it wasn’t as popular as Viravos (Virrow - 12.55% vs Viravos - 28.39%), because when browsing for posts on tumblr and twitter, there always seemed to be an equal amount of content for both. Then again, I never took into account the age of those posts - perhaps Virrow has lost some of the fans it had in S1 after Aaravos’ introduction in S2.

**Dominating characters**

Can you look at the graph above and tell me what’s in common between all the ships colored in orange?

You guessed it! They all involve a member of the Mage Family (Viren, Soren, or Claudia). The possible reasons:

  * Viren, Soren and Claudia are well fleshed out and complex characters;
  * they interact with many different characters;
  * if a person likes one member of magefam, they often like them all;
  * Soren is especially versatile because of his age - he’s young enough to be shipped with teens and he’s also an adult;
  * of all the teenage characters Soren and Claudia have the most screen time after Rayla and Callum. Viren has the most screen time from all adult characters.



We haven’t even covered the more rare ships, which also include plenty of magefam.

**User added ships**

No user-added ships have made it into the top 11, and only three made it into top 30. Are they less popular? Liked less? I don’t think so. As I mentioned in part 1 - the reason for that is the fact that they weren’t on the list.

Consider Aarrow for a bit. As much as I like this ship, I don’t actively ship it and the only reason it made it onto my list was because I came across [this post](https://propheticfire.tumblr.com/post/610941594158448640/new-tdp-ship-name-yall-aaravosharrow-aarrow). I thought it was a cool idea for a ship and I wanted to see who else shipped it. And here we are - 11 people. 1 person even chose it as their favorite ship!

Another interesting example is Opiren. I hadn’t found anyone shipping them on tumblr, but I lowkey ship them myself, so I decided to add them. My boyfriend came up with the ship name and there we go - 19 people! No one chose it as their favorite ship, though.

Now compare it with, say, Grazi. It got an almost the same number of votes, but it wasn’t on the list, which means that only the users who care enough about it to include it manually voted for it. One person chose it as their favorite ship as well. If I had included it myself, I’m sure it would’ve got as many ships as Sabos or Swordjanne simply by being there.

Why didn’t I, then? Because it hadn’t occurred to me and I tried to limit my list to ships I could find content of on tumblr (I hadn’t thought of checking ao3 at the time).

Ezranya and Ezris are an interesting case, because quite a few people added “when they’re older” as a sort of justification, even though I feel like it’s ok to ship them as kids Shipping does not need to be sexual. You can have platonic or romantic kids ships (kids have crushes!) or just very strong friendships bonds. I don’t know if the latter counts as shipping in the eyes of most fans, but I just want Ezranya and Ezris shippers to feel happy and supported <3


	5. Total Ships by Popularity (Part 2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING! This Chapter contains mentions and discussion of sensitive topics, mainly: big age gap ships, adult/minor ships, human/dragon ships, and incest.
> 
> Nothing too graphic, but proceed with caution if any of these topics are your triggers! 
> 
> The first half only mentions some shipnames, but the second half, titled "Problematic Ships" in large letters for convenient skipping, goes into a more detailed analysis of what kind of problematic ships there are in the fandom, which of them are not actually problematic and why people ship problematic ships in the first place.
> 
> You can also skip this chapter altogether and continue with Chapter 6, which will jump straight to discussing people's favorite ships.

Terminology:

I will refer to ships between 3 and more characters as **polyships**.

 **OT3** \- one true “threesome” or a ship involving three characters (usually a polly triad rather than a “V” relationship (when one character has two partners, but these two partners are not romantically involved with each other).

[Ship list](https://tdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com/ships) for convenience (trust me, this is the part where you definitely need it! :D)

**Ships with 1 to 10 shippers**

The remaining bit of ships is, as can be expected, an interesting bunch! 

Yellow - ships included into the list in the poll.  
Blue - added by users.

Once again, we can observe how inclusion into the list made certain ships more popular than others. 

Grenavos is a ship that became popular in S2 and still seems to be holding up, while Ruren was popular during S1 and I haven’t seen any new content of it in a while. I haven’t observed much about Cormaya, and Khessamaya is definitely a S3 thing. All of these ships are rather niche and there are some user added ships that, I suspect, would be closer to them in vote count (Sordia already is!). 

Let’s take Raydium. I’ve seen some people who shipped both Rayllum and Claudium, but didn’t include Raydium. Some of them might potentially ship that as an OT3 (although not necessarily all of them).

Same for Jamayen, especially since when it comes to multishipping ships with the same character, Janaya and Gremaya is the most popular combo!

Ibyx is also an interesting case. As the only two skywing elves with names and proper screentime, I suspected they’d attract more fans’ attention. 

Elavos and Ziravos are interesting cases, both relating to events in Aaravos’ past which fans speculate about a lot. Even though it was later clarified that 

Elarion was a city instead of a person, many people had already established AUs and headcanons of human Elarion. It is no surprise to me they are reluctant to give that ship up. And I don’t think they should! People in real life name their kids Paris or London. Why couldn’t a human family name their daughter Elarion? I have a feeling some people might’ve been embarrassed for getting Elarion “wrong” and decided not to include it, which might explain such a tiny number.

Ziravos also has a surprisingly low number of shippers, but I don’t know the reason. Probably, like for most small ships, the probability that the shippers saw the poll _and_ felt comfortable participating was simply lower. 

If you saw the poll, but didn’t participate or you didn’t include a particular ship for whatever reason, could you drop me an anon ask with your reason? I’m really curious and I would like to accommodate any future poll to the needs of all my fellow TDP fans!

**Ships where characters know each other or don’t**

Dark blue - characters haven’t spoken/met[ _  
_](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fdrive.google.com%2Ffile%2Fd%2F1o31z73jzl5urY_j1IrF1T_RDE4HKDJvX%2Fview%3Fusp%3Dsharing&t=ZjgwNGEzNGYwMmVjYTc3YjJjZGY1OGRkM2QwY2Y2ZTUwYzc5ZDlkNiw1NEwzODFqNA%3D%3D&b=t%3AQB80El3dlvufJXaBWVcG3w&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F616220932504240128%2Fresult-discussion-total-ships-part-3&m=1)Light blue - characters have spoken/met[ _  
_](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fdrive.google.com%2Ffile%2Fd%2F1o31z73jzl5urY_j1IrF1T_RDE4HKDJvX%2Fview%3Fusp%3Dsharing&t=ZjgwNGEzNGYwMmVjYTc3YjJjZGY1OGRkM2QwY2Y2ZTUwYzc5ZDlkNiw1NEwzODFqNA%3D%3D&b=t%3AQB80El3dlvufJXaBWVcG3w&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F616220932504240128%2Fresult-discussion-total-ships-part-3&m=1)

Here, we have a lot more ships where at least two characters have never met. I say “at least two”, because we venture into polyship territory (more on that in a sec).

Some of these, however, are based on my assumptions. 

  * Claravos - they haven’t spoken or met, but Aaravos knows who Claudia is.
  * Elavos - connection implied in the poem.
  * Ziravos - heavily implied Aaravos was the one who gave Ziard his staff.
  * Fareli - in principle could’ve met, but just as likely could not have. 
  * Opaya - I just realized that the probability that these two have met is rather high. I am too lazy to change the color though :”D
  * Rugren - I suspect they know of each other’s existence.
  * Sarpeli - same as Opaya, but this one is colored correctly.
  * Soravos - “Little Bug Pal” doesn’t count.



I mean, it makes sense that such ships would be less popular than the ones where characters know each other, but I also wonder how different the results would’ve been if I had included them in my original list. I refuse to believe that only one person ships Virunavos, for instance.

**Polyships**

Pink - three characters  
Purple - four characters

It’s no surprise that polyships aren’t as popular as monogamous ships, however I always expect there to be at least one popular OT3 in each fandom. Sure, Varrai ranks 15th on the poll by popularity, but I expected the most popular OT3 to be Raydium. 

I think the reason here is the fact that Rayllum became canon relatively early in the show, making fans just to Kadia instead (although some my see Kadia as a better dynamic? I would need to ask the fans of these ships). 

Varrai, however, is most likely popular because of the interpersonal relationships of the three characters. Viren was close with Harrow, Harrow was close with Sarai, and I don’t think it’s a huge leap to assume that Viren and Sarai had a friendly relationship as well. 

If I were to classify TDP polyships, I’d say it goes something like this:

  1. all parties involved are friends, some might be lovers in canon;
  2. one character connects the others who are not friends or don’t know each other in canon;
  3. friends/lovers + a character, who isn’t their friend, but they know them in canon
  4. friends/lovers + a character at least one of them hasn’t met in canon;
  5. all parties are related to each other;
  6. incest + a character at least one of them hasn’t met in canon. 



So what do we have then?

  1. Jamayen, Laidriruthari, Virexarrai

  2. Radium, Virunavos

  3. Sorgrenvus

  4. Aruthari, Virrowvos, Viruthari, Virexavos

  5. Virsordia

  6. Aarasordia, Aaravirdia, Virsoravos, Virdisoravos




I don’t know what that says about the ships and the shippers, exactly. 

  * a third of the ships (5 out of 15) are incest;
  * almost two thirds of them (9 out of 15) involve a character at least one party involved doesn’t know;
  * almost two thirds (9 out of 15) involve Viren, 8 involve Aaravos, 5 - Claudia or Soren, 4 - Runaan, 3 - Ethari, 2 - Harrow, Viren’s Ex-wife, or Gren, 1 Janai, Amaya, Lain, Tiadrin, Sarai, Rayla, or Callum;
  * 12 out of 15 ships involve at least one member of the magefam;
  * two thirds involve only adult characters (10 out of 15);
  * one involves only minor characters;
  * almost a third (4 out of 15) involve some combination of adult/minor ships.



## Problematic Ships

There are many things that can make certain ships problematic in the eyes of fans, but I would like to discuss four categories:

  1. large age gaps between adults (yellow)

  2. human/dragon relationships (orange)

  3. adult/minor relationships (teal)

  4. non-platonic relationships between family members (purple)




As you can tell, all three of these categories can overlap, but I will discuss the non-incestuous version of the first two separately from incest.

There’s also an interesting case - Nyx, who is shipped with both minors and adults. Since we don’t know her age, I don’t think we can make any assumptions about ships including her. 

**Large age gaps between adults**

Out of 89 ships in the shipping poll, I counted 31 (more than a third) that include an age gap of 5 years or more between two non-related adult characters. Since there are plenty of healthy relationships with large age gap in real life, I decided to to define what could potentially make such a ship problematic:

  1. the younger adult has entered adulthood only recently (18-20 years old);

  2. the age gap is significantly high (10+ years).




The word “potentially” here is key, because even if both conditions are met, the ships are still not necessarily problematic.

One ship that gets extra attention when it comes to hate is Ruren. I think it’s due to its early popularity in season 1 (which seems to have declined since then). It’s interesting to note that Corpeli, a fairly equivalent ship (Corvus is 20 and Opeli is in her late 30s - early 40s) not only doesn’t get any hate - it’s actually the most popular non-canon ship (ranking at #6)!

I don’t know the exact nature of this inequality, but it could be due to Opeli looking very young and Corvus looking older than he is (frankly, I was very surprised he was only 20!). It does, however, reveal the inconsistency of fans judgement when it comes to the topic of “problematic” ships, which, in my opinion, is definitely worth noting.

Another interesting thing is that out of 11 of such ships (if we include Corpeli), 7 include Soren, 2 - Corvus, 1 - Crow Master, Kasef or Marcos. I will discuss Soren’s popularity in multishipping in a future post, but if you have any ideas to share - I’d love to hear them!

**Human/dragon relationships**

There are only two in my poll - Pyrren and Regicide. I have heard people call such ships zoophilia, however the dragons in TDP are as intelligent as humans and are able to give or refuse consent, which is the biggest issue with actual zoophilic relationships. Therefore, I would like to argue that they cannot be classified as “problematic” just because someone finds them “squicky”.

At the same time, the “squickiness” factor could influence why human/dragon or elf/dragon relationships are so rare. Another reason could be the size difference.

**Adult/minor relationships**

We are finally venturing into truly problematic territory. Before we proceed, I would like to clarify certain things:

> **1\. Adult/minor ships are not automatically pedophilia!**
> 
> Please stop using this word to refer to any relationship with a large age gap! It’s not just a matter of accuracy - by doing so, you create a “boy who cried wolf” environment, where it becomes impossible to distinguish shippers from online predators. You also turn “pedophilia” into a meaningless buzzword and make people who call out predators get taken less seriously. **You’re not helping any children - you’re putting them in more danger.**
> 
> **2\. Some people will ship adults with children**
> 
> This does not give you the right to bully them! Fictional characters are not real and there has been no evidence of shipping having any real impact on children’s safety in the real world. Just block the tags you don’t like and move on with your life. 
> 
> **3\. I will not discuss incest in this section - it will be discussed at the end of this chapter**

With that out of the way, it is interesting to note that none of the ships I got in the poll are actually pedophilic. I don’t know if it’s because no one in this fandom ships Ezran, Aanya, Ellis and Zym with adults (or each other in a sexual way) or if this topic is so taboo, people aren’t comfortable admitting to that even in an anonymous poll. 

This section will focus on adult/teen relationships.

Just like with the adult/adult age gap relationships, not all of these relationships are equal. I plotted all adult/teen relationships by vote count and divided them into three categories:

  1. high school age (purple)
  2. college age/high school age (orange)
  3. older adult/teen (blue)



**1\. High school age**

Relationships with such age gaps occur naturally in real life and are not inherently problematic. Since a great deal of TDP shippers are teens (ages 13 to 19), it is easy to see how Kadia (or Kaudia), Sorayla and Calren are the most popular in this group.

**2\. College student/high school student**

Here we see Claudia pared up with slightly older guys, who are still young enough to be (at least visually) in her dating range (I do acknowledge that the 4 year gap is big enough here to be problematic, but give it two more years, and it would be a pretty standard age difference). The only young adult character missing here is Marcos. That would complete the Claudia shipping cycle :D

**3\. Older adult/teen relationships  
**

Aka Claravos and Aaravum (Aarasordia, Aaravirdia, and Virdisoravos are all, in essence, Claravos x Soren/Viren/both).

These two ships are too character specific to be just random fetishising of Claudia and Callum. Both are connected to Aaravos through narrative and would make compelling dark stories. 

It is also interesting that Aaravos and Viren (the villains) are the only adults shipped with minors (at least in this poll). There’s sadly not enough data to make any meaningful conclusions on that.

**Non-platonic relationships between family members**

Aka incest.

Incest in fiction is a topic I’ve always found fascinating. What inspires people to ship incestuous ships? How do people relate to those ships themselves? A connection between incestuous ships and irl practice/support of incest is often drawn by people, but I haven’t observed such a connection in my 14 years of fandom activity. Such correlation doesn’t seem to be there.

If I had to sum up incestuous ships in TDP, I could just say magefam and magefam + Aaravos. Does it mean people don’t ship the royal family? Not really, because I’ve seen some content of Harrow and his kids, or the princes together, but what I haven’t seen is Sarai/Amaya or Khessa/Janai. 

Sordia is an interesting case, because it’s the only incest ship to score higher than some of the ships from my original list (it ranks #32 out of 40). It’s also one of those ships, I think, that would’ve had more votes if it actually _were_ on the list.

So why do people ship incest? It’s not an easy question, but from the conversations I’ve had with people or things I’ve observed in fanfiction, I can list at least _some_ of the reasons:

  * some people like the character dynamic regardless of whether or not they are related;
  * some people like the character dynamic _because_ they are related;
  * the characters already show love for each other (especially in case of Sordia and Virdia), so they’re easy to ship;
  * some people would like to imagine a loving relationship between characters who don’t show it onscreen (in case or SorVir);
  * some onscreen character interactions can be interpreted as shippy;
  * some people find it sexy, or ship it in a strictly sexual way without getting into the characters’ feelings;
  * some people like the dark aspect of it and want to use this kind of shipping to explore darker themes.



If you ship incest of any kind, could you write an anonymous comment or send me an ask on [tumblr](https://avtoservis.tumblr.com/)? 

**Conclusion**

Problematic ships are an integral, albeit often unwanted, part of any fandom. They do not necessarily reflect the shippers’ real world views and opinions and are often used as an outlet to explore dark themes.

There’s often double standards regarding which ships are deemed problematic and which are not and disgust towards certain ships is frequently expressed through bulling and call-outs.

While most shippers of problematic ships are aware of the problematic nature of their favorite ships, there’s still merit in having civil discussions on various ships and their implications. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really appreciate all the kudos and komments! Please let me know how you feel about different ships. Maybe you have some insights you can share? Feel free to comment anonymously is you aren't comfortable discussing ships publicly.


	6. Other User Added Ships

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We’ve discussed the main ships, consisting of canon characters only. Now I’d like to discuss the following:
> 
> self-ships;  
>  ships with OCs;  
>  ships with characters from other fandoms;  
>  crack ships;  
>  ships I couldn’t classify.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I completely forgot about this bit! Sorry about that - Favorite Ships comes in Chapter 7 ^^'

## 1\. Self-ships

These are the ships where a person ships themselves with a character. I didn’t receive a lot of these, which is surprising, because I’ve seen quite a few people self-ship online. 

It is a shame, because self-ships are great and they are a really neat indicator of how _desirable_ some characters are. Like, sure, you can have a character that is loved by the fandom, like, say, Amaya. Many people love Amaya for different reasons, but some people actually feel sexually or emotionally attracted to her. Of course, not everybody who feels attracted to a character ships themselves with that character, but quite a few people do.

It’s possible that many people are embarrassed to admit it even in an anonymous poll.

Here’s a pie chart of all the self-ships I’ve received:

The number inside each slice represents the number of people who voted for a given ship. 

With such a tiny sample, the margin of error is huge! It’s still fun to see that Aaravos is the most desired character, which coincides with my observations from simply browsing the internet. 

## 2\. Ships with OCs

Okay, I’ve seen a lot of awesome TDP OCs shipped with various canon characters (the majority - with Aaravos), but I only got three people adding anything OC related:

  * Nyx x OC
  * Ateerida (Ateris (OC startuched elf male, of Kurizera) x Fareeda)
  * All the Startouched OCs ships



People put lots of effort into their OCs, but I feel like they don’t get enough appreciation. Someone should organize an event for TDP OCs (whether it’s romantic OCs, fanchildren, or OCs needed for the plot of someone’s story). It’ll take me some time before I’m done with the shipping poll, so I’d be really happy if someone else took this task upon them :”D 

## 3\. Ships with characters from other fandoms 

I got only one - Sormiko (Soren x Kimiko Tohomiko from Shaolin Showdown)

Aaravos/Lotor people, where have you gone??? :o 

## 4\. Crack Ships

A crack ship is generally a ship that is somehow unusual. It can be something utterly bizarre, funny or sometimes - disturbing. 

  * Ezran x Jelly tarts
  * Gren x Strawberry Cake
  * Berto x The Ruthless 
  * Nyx x Shadowpaw x Moonstrider



The first two are obvious - cute boys and their favorite dessert. 

The third one is especially funny if you imagine the huge Berto from Callum’s dream! 

The last one is what I’d call bizarre. I don’t actually know if it’s meant as a crack ship or a serious ship. In case it was supposed to be serious - I would like to apologize to the shipper! I think all ships are valid regardless of how I personally feel about them! 

## 5\. Ships I couldn’t classify

  * Aarvaos with anyone
  * Kazi (the translator elf x ________) (this is the form I received it in)



The first one’s very clear, although I’m not sure if the person meant _literally_ everyone, like, including Bait, Pip and Berto.

The second one, I assume, is supposed to show that the person headcanons Kazi to be aro/ace? Is that correct, OP? Send me a message or an ask and tell me, if you see this post!

—

I also received two mean-spirited ones, which I decided not to include in this discussion :T sorry guys, but that was rude.


	7. Favorite Ships (Part 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter I will present the data for the Favorite Ships as well as a discussion. This will take a total of 2-3 chapters, I think. Thank you for being patient with me!
> 
> CW: This discussion contains mentions of three ships which some people might not be comfortable with (sibling incest and adult/teen relationships). Only their shipnames are mentioned - the nature of these relationships is not discussed in any way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before I begin, I would like to address an issue I’ve noticed - I have not been consistent with ship names! You’ll see Jamaya in one chart and Janaya in another, Aruthari in one, Arunari in another. The decision to change Kadia to Kaudia has been recent (due to Kaudia being the ship name actually used by the shippers).
> 
> To prevent any major confusion, I updated the ship list to include alternative spellings of shipnames. If you’d like me to include an alternative ship name, please let me know! ^u^

As usual - [ship list](https://tdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com/ships). 

Terminology:

> **Total Ships** refer to the ships people voted for when asked to choose all the ships they ship (click [here ](https://tdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com/post/615953688185520128/ships-by-popularity)for the list). I will also use **T** or **TS** to refer to these ships.
> 
> **Favorite Ships** refer to the ships people voted for when asked to choose only one ship which they consider their favorite. I will also use **F** or **FS** to refer to these ships. 
> 
> I will use the word **rank** to refer to the position a ship takes in terms of number of votes (rank #1 is the one with the most votes, while rank #14 is the one with the least votes for Favorite Ships. For Total Ships it’s rank #40).
> 
> As in previous discussions, I will refer to Rayllum, Janaya and Ruthari as **the Trio**.

There are 41 ships chosen as someone’s favorite, which is a lot more than I’d expected:

If Rayllum was doing well in the Total Ship results, here it’s simply killing it! If the table doesn’t show you how popular this ship is in the fandom, here’s a pie chart:

_[bigger version (interactive)](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fspreadsheets%2Fu%2F1%2Fd%2Fe%2F2PACX-1vT28wxUH8c3ZuiDW-fU84nTO7kh7F-3sO4nvqaMKV9wxi1n4QfPlr_T_O5hev3CByLyWfDtxpT58-9f%2Fpubchart%3Foid%3D2051253443%26format%3Dinteractive&t=NGY1ZGI5MzQwODkyMDNhZTg2N2FlYWFhM2YzZjZlYmY2YzgyZmEzNSxwYk5lRUlCSw%3D%3D&b=t%3AQB80El3dlvufJXaBWVcG3w&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F617836443261386753%2Ffavorite-ships&m=1)   
_

This is incredible! Even with a 3.7% margin of error, the overall fandom trend still seems to be that at least half of the entire fandom think of Rayllum as their favorite ship. 

And if this pie chart doesn’t convince you, here’s a bar chart (just keep scrolling):

[ _bigger version (interactive)_ ](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fspreadsheets%2Fu%2F1%2Fd%2Fe%2F2PACX-1vT28wxUH8c3ZuiDW-fU84nTO7kh7F-3sO4nvqaMKV9wxi1n4QfPlr_T_O5hev3CByLyWfDtxpT58-9f%2Fpubchart%3Foid%3D535695728%26format%3Dinteractive&t=MTBhM2NhNjViMWIzMmExODFmYmFiY2IzZGM2N2JmNGMxNzcyNGVlYixwYk5lRUlCSw%3D%3D&b=t%3AQB80El3dlvufJXaBWVcG3w&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F617836443261386753%2Ffavorite-ships&m=1)

Like, how impressive is that? Rayllum is 4 times more likely to be someone’s favorite ship than Janaya and 6 times more likely than Ruthari and Viravos.

##  **Favorite Ships vs Total Ships**

The first thing I would like to discuss is how favorite ships differ from total ships in terms of popularity. Cross-referencing both can allow us to understand which ships are actively shipped by people and which are just liked “in the background”. 

If you read my [discussion on total ships](https://tdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com/post/615954138378993664/result-discussion-total-ships-part-1) (chapters 3-5 in this document), you probably remember that I pointed out the flaw in the first question of the poll (i.e. “What ships do you ship?” is too vague a question). Hopefully comparing the two categories will counter some of that vagueness. 

To compare both lists, removed any ships that don’t appear on the Total Ship list and the ones that were not chosen as a favorite ship by anyone. Here’s [the list of ships that were removed](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fspreadsheets%2Fd%2Fe%2F2PACX-1vR3s7cm071o6GFC9QwC1_QFt6mG9QwPORdERYCb8NcDvAp5mAiRDEevTVxb6OqggrtOlom_WREGv0Y2%2Fpubhtml%3Fgid%3D334715161%26single%3Dtrue&t=N2Q1ZTdiMDRmOGZhZWVjNmM4NjEzZmEzMzMyNDg5N2RlOWM2YzNiZSxPMVhYVmZDNA%3D%3D&b=t%3AQB80El3dlvufJXaBWVcG3w&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F617836886230220800%2Fresult-discussion-favorite-ships-part-1&m=1) from this comparison. 

One problem, though - there is no way to directly compare the results, since Total Ships have 40 ranks and Favorite Ships have 14.

## Trying out different methods 

Take the top 10 Favorite ships as an example:

From the table it is clear that Rayllum, Janaya and Ruthari retained the same positions in terms of popularity. Viravos appears to have jumped higher - from #8 to #4. In fact, the only ship in the top 10 that dropped in rank is Corpeli - from #6 to #9. But it’s not a dramatic drop, right?

Aaaaaand this is where it gets problematic. #6 out of 40 is a much higher position than #9 out of 14. The best way to think about is to find the most obvious points of correspondence:

  * F1 corresponds to T1
  * F7 corresponds to T20 
  * F14 corresponds to T40



Here, F refers to the rank in Favorite Ships and T - in Total Ships.

Now things become a bit more clear. T6 is closer to the first category and F9 - to the middle. So if I were to simplify the comparison, I’d say 

  * the Trio remain at the beginning of the list; 
  * Viravos, Gremaya and Corpeli jumped from the beginning to the middle; 
  * Virrow, Sorgren and Raydia remain in the middle; 
  * Sordia jumps from the end to the middle.



This method is even more evident at the end of the list:

These are the last nine ships on the list. At first, the green ones seem like a vast improvement in position and the salmon one - a slight worsening. But if we apply our new categories:

  * F1 - T1 [beginning] 
  * F7 - T20 [middle]
  * F14 - T40 [end]



we see that: 

  * Aarrow, Aaruthari, Claravos, Clyx, Grenavos and Rugren remained at the end;
  * Ezris, Grazi and Kasren fell from the middle to the end;
  * Sabos had the most dramatic fall - from the beginning to the end!



But then this method is still too broad. Aarrow and Aaruthari both get into the same group - “remain at the end”, even though Aarrow was closer to the middle of the list than Aaruthari. I figured these three categories could be broken down even further:

I divided 40 by 14 and got 2.857, which I rounded up to 3. Hence, three T ranks for 1 F rank. This is obviously not the only way you can arrange this table, as you could alternatively “lock” the first place (1 - 1) and do the others in triplets ( 2 - 2, 3, 4; 3 - 5, 6, 7; etc), which shifts the values quite a bit.

But let’s use this one for now.

I rewrote the Total Ship ranks so that they match the Favorite Ship ones according to the table (e.g. if a ship is ranked #10 in Total Ships, the corresponding rank is going to be #4):

This comparison is very intuitive and more accurate than the three simple categories I used before. We can compare the results for the last 9 ships again:

  * OLD: Aarrow, Aaruthari, Claravos, Clyx, Grenavos and Rugren remained at the end;  
NEW: Aarrow and Grenavos fell by three positions, Claravos - by two, Aaruthari, Clyx and Rugren - by one.   
(We can immediately see that Aarrow and Grenavos were the most popular of this group);   
  

  * OLD: Ezris, Grazi and Kasren fell from the middle to the end;  
NEW: Ezris and Grazi fell from #10 to #14, while Kasren fell from #8 to #14 (Kasren clearly suffered a bigger fall);  
  

  * OLD: Sabos had the most dramatic fall - from the beginning to the end!  
NEW: Sabos fell from #3 to #14 (I don’t know if this makes the fall feel more dramatic or not).



This method is still not very accurate: 

  * it conflates several different positions into one (Viravos and Gremaya are now both #3, whereas originally they were ranked #8 and #9 respectively);
  * there are at least two ways to group the ranks into triplets, neither of which is particularly accurate and both yield significantly different results.



Notice how with this method most ships seem to have fallen in rank, some remained and only one rose! Also, even though Janaya and Ruthari did not change position, this method makes it seem like they fell in rank.

I don’t exactly know why that is, but it’s probably due to the fact that the “value” of a rank feels different depending on the total number of participants. Think of it like this - it sucks to be the third our of three, but it sucks a bit less if it’s out of 40, doesn’t it?

## The method I decided to use

So here’s a method, which, albeit less intuitive, is still more accurate.

My boyfriend suggested normalizing the ranks, i.e. making the ranks of both lists proportionally equivalent. 

This means that there is no need to manually group anything together and it doesn’t matter if we have two lists of 14 vs 40 ranks or 14 vs 40 000 ranks.

This method still has issues of its own:

  * not as straightforward to interpret;
  * ships appear to have fallen in rank even though they didn’t (esp. for Janaya and Ruthari).



This is the formula that we used:

where

  * r_n is normalized rank;
  * r is the current rank of a given ship;
  * R is the lowest possible rank of a list.



So, for example, if we normalize Gremaya’s rank in the FS list, it’ll be:

where

  * 5 is Gremaya’s current rank in the FS table;
  * 14 is the lowest possible rank for FS.



Just like with a regular rank, the normalized rank is highest when its numerical value is lowest.

This is what we got:

[ _bigger table, comparing different stats_ ](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fspreadsheets%2Fd%2Fe%2F2PACX-1vR3s7cm071o6GFC9QwC1_QFt6mG9QwPORdERYCb8NcDvAp5mAiRDEevTVxb6OqggrtOlom_WREGv0Y2%2Fpubhtml%3Fgid%3D886731216%26single%3Dtrue&t=NjMyNmFiODM4MjNiYmRkMzc1YjA2YjBlYTE4NzY4ZDUyZTIzMTFlNSxlc3lCNFU2ag%3D%3D&b=t%3AQB80El3dlvufJXaBWVcG3w&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F617837670345900032%2Fresult-discussion-favorite-ships-part-2&m=1)

You can see that the very first place (Rayllum) remains the same for both lists, as well as the very last place (everything ranked 100). My boyfriend also suggested adding a color scale - the darker the color, the higher the ship’s rank.

I also colored some of the ships:

  * light blue means the relative rank of the ship has not changed;
  * green means the ship has risen in rank;
  * white means the ship has dropped in rank;
  * yellow means the ship has _massively_ dropped in rank (by at least 40 points).



I felt that it was important to point out the very huge falls, because many of them nicely correspond with some of my conclusions from the TS results (I’ll get to that in a sec). 

I wouldn’t be me if I hadn’t made a graph :D

[bigger version (interactive)](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2Fspreadsheets%2Fd%2Fe%2F2PACX-1vR3s7cm071o6GFC9QwC1_QFt6mG9QwPORdERYCb8NcDvAp5mAiRDEevTVxb6OqggrtOlom_WREGv0Y2%2Fpubchart%3Foid%3D1682786159%26format%3Dinteractive&t=MThmM2UwZDQ1ZDM3MWFhOWJhY2M4MzVmYjEwMjQ4ZGQ2NDRkMGU4Yyxlc3lCNFU2ag%3D%3D&b=t%3AQB80El3dlvufJXaBWVcG3w&p=https%3A%2F%2Ftdp-shipping-dock.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F617837670345900032%2Fresult-discussion-favorite-ships-part-2&m=1)

I think this is the most intuitive visual representation of how different ships changed in rank:

  * the red dots are the ranks the ships had on the TS list;
  * the blue dots are the ranks they have on the FS list.



So that means:

  * red done above blue? - The ship fell in rank;
  * red dot only - the rank hasn’t changed;
  * red dot _below_ blue? - The ship climbed up in rank.



Interestingly enough, only two ships actually improved their position!

## Ships that haven’t changed rank and those that went up in rank

It is no surprise that Rayllum remained at rank #1 considering how much this ship is loved by the fans. Janaya and Ruthari didn’t move their position either, but the “weight” of their ranks slightly reduced in a smaller list of options. 

Virex, Aarathari and Aaravum are the other ships that retained their position, but I think it’s more of a coincidence than something systematic. 

Because the FS list is so much shorter than the TS list, most ships appear to have dropped in position, even if they didn’t (such as Janaya and Ruthari). And that makes the two ships that went up even more interesting!

Sordia went up by 17.8 points and Raydium - by 2.5. Both are small ships with not many voters:

  * Sordia - 10 TS votes, 6 FS votes;
  * Raydium - 3 TS votes, 2 FS votes,



yet the voters are pretty consistent - the majority of people who voted for these ships in TS chose them as their favorite ships. Sordia is particularly impressive in this regard, seeing how incredibly loyal its shippers are!

## Ships which fell in rank the most

I chose the ships that fell by at least 40 points. The list is arranged from the biggest fall to the smallest:

  * Sabos fell by 84 points 
  * Harrai fell by 76 points 
  * Laidrin fell by 74 points 
  * Grenvus fell by 51 points
  * Corpeli fell by 48 points
  * Kaudia fell by 48 points 
  * Kasren fell by 41 points 



We can immediately see that the top three ships were in the top 10 on the Total Ships list and they fell the most. It makes sense when you think about _why_ these ships got so high in the first place. In addition to my vague word choice in the original questionnaire, these ships are either canon (Harrai, Laidrin) or include side characters that are not part of any popular ships (Sabos, Corpeli). 

Sabos is especially fascinating, as it’s not only a non-canon ship, it’s a ship involving characters that got their names from fans! They do have a scene together that could be seen as “shippy”, which explains why so many people jumped on that wagon as opposed to, say, Sorcos. 

The same goes for Corpeli. Gren and Corvus are canonically friends, but they don’t have any significant scenes together, while Corvus literally holds Opeli’s hand. 

Speaking of Grenvus (and also - Kaudia and Kasren), they weren’t as high on the Total Ships list as the aforementioned ships, but all of them seem to have fallen from roughly the middle to the bottom of the list. I guess they just don’t have large fanbases.


End file.
